On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 10:51:57AM +0000, Nick O'Leary wrote:
> $ git diff README.md
> diff --cc README.md
> index 61d78b2,620d806..0000000
> --- a/README.md
> +++ b/README.md
> @@@ -1,7 -1,1 +1,11 @@@
> -This is my default readme
> ++<<<<<<< HEAD
> +merged-history-test
> +===================
> +
> +### About
> +
> +This is your project's README.md file. It helps users understand what your
> - project does, how to use it and anything else they may need to know.
> ++project does, how to use it and anything else they may need to know.
> ++=======
> ++This is my default readme
> ++>>>>>>> dev
>
> This does not look right to me. The 'This is my default readme' line
> has ++ at the start - suggesting its new to both parent copies of the
> file, which isn't the case - it came from the dev branch so should be
> prefixed with '+ '.
> I'm also not clear why the line beginning 'project does' has both a -
> and ++ prefix.

Are you sure there aren't whitespace differences in those two lines?
For instance, if I do:
# base commit
git init
git commit --allow-empty -m base
# one side; note missing newline!
printf 'this is my default readme' >file
git add file
git commit -m default
# other side
git checkout -b other HEAD^
{
echo this is a longer
echo and more involved
echo README
} >file
git add file
git commit -m longer
# and now merge and get a conflict
git merge master
Then I get similar output to you. The content with merge-conflicts
can't represent the original lack-of-newline for that file, because of
course there's another ">>>" line after it.
If I swap out the printf for echo, adding the newline, then it produces
the output you'd expect.
-Peff